Talking about confirmation bias / AI 'listening' in? I open YouTube and this is the first thing...

Modern Society Is Becoming Illiterate

I think currently it produce a rather similar ratio of negatives and positives, but I don't think the negative aspect had outweighted or even come close to do it yet in general, the sheer amount of years of positives and what it still allow us to do..., yeah, not there yet.

It is clearly headed to disaster tho, as the consequences are already real and things keep getting worse, but it's not really yet in a point of no return state, and I don't think it'll be either in just a few years, but it is capable of pretty much shifting to some of the worst outcomes pretty quickly.

When some of the bilionaries directly involved stopped acting alone and fell in line around the figure of one of the leaders of the world most influential countries, it changed from being a distant fear to a palpable one.

But even so, even as the people supporting it are in line, and its reach has achieved a pretty big division of a big country and is influencing some of the world, the lack of inteligence and prepare of some of them is a unexpected blessing. There was already some break ups and even infighting too, it's clear they are only in line for their own personal gain, as expected from bilionaries.

It is already really bad, people will feed themselves with whatever fit their current mindset (which can contradict itself on a hourly basis) and always pretend they are right and they are not part of a huge problem, or even that there is no problem at all.

That people they don't know suffer because they deserve to, and even be happy with their suffering; or that when they don't want a particular person to be accountable for their actions, always including themselves, anything is justifiable; or that when they can't bring themselves to accept reality everything is questionable and there is always a conspiracy behind it to justify the perpretator to actually be the victim.

We are already at a point where self brainwashing routine is so widespread that is literally fruitless to try to have actual discussions, people become literally vicious and full of bloodlust for things they don't even understand, yeah, it's really that bad, and the internet is the medium for all of that to be possible and keep spreading, but the actual full blown destroy society functionality is still quite far from being real, because the people in control are still just mostly acting by personal greed, there is definitely acting by lunacy too, but control to achieve more money, not disruption, is still the imperative individual motivation.

Positive before social media,

Negative since, to many nutters have access to the internet and all the bots trolling.

More positive than negative.


Everything has a use, both good or bad.


The internet is a great tool and its the best thing that was made in the Age of Information.


The thing that the internet did the most is reveal how awful and immoral people truly are, better than being in the dark like 20th century and prior. What we know of history was recorded in history books, but that doesnt necessarily mean its everything. There's more things we dont know but we know more about things that are happening now compared to say a 100 years ago.

I would already say all that is a net negative. Before the internet you had much more contact with your neighbors and your friends, essentially fact checking you and exposing you to countering ideas without both sides digging their heels in with google and echo chambers.

Yes, it has literally become fruitless to have actual discussions. That's a huge negative.

Did you watch the video I linked? I wonder what you think about that. That video draws a line between the destruction that's happening to democracy right now and the smart phone. Emotional based thinking encouraged through short videos vs rational thinking encouraged through books / newspapers. 

The video makes the claim that we're heading back to an illiterate society and democracy only became possible thanks to literacy.

Is smart phone addiction and the destruction of critical thinking and literacy still reversible? Schools are now banning smart phones in class here at least. Yet the days of doing your research in the library, looking up and analyzing texts are long gone. Book reports are now 'written' with ChatGPT. 


https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/worsening-2022-pisa-tests-results-oecd/

Seems like a pretty negative effect. (Although also very much related to worse education today)

I did not watch the video, but based on what you are saying I agree with the premise, as I said in my initial post we are potentially heading to a reset in development as a society, and illiteracy is indeed one of the big problems, indeed.

I think it has going on apart from the internet tho, even as with everything, the internet has massively potentialized it. To try to keep the population stupid and in control is a really old political tactic, "bread and circuses" has it in its essence.

I think AI is a really big next step to make things even worse, but I think "googling it" and the overal internet information era is a great thing, the internet became a thing exactly because universities wanted to share information with each other, not having to go to the library is not the problem, having access to information 24/7 is awesome, the problem is how this information is being used and manipulated, which in itself is a problem humanity always faced, the winner wrote the history books, afterall, someone born in the USA and someone born here in Brazil have vastly different opinions about each other history based on what was purposedly used or not on their education, but once again, yes, it's made incredibly worse by the internet how it is now.

I think what we have with the internet is incredible, and I think we should never fear potential problems so much as to give up on it, we should learn to do better and on this particular case, well made enforced regulations are really in need.

As you said about school, you don't want kids with unsurveilled internet access there? Great. Make clear to parents it's going to be a big problem if their kids are caught doing so. Kids are bored and not learning because they are conditioned to 15 seconds content bursts because of Tiktok shorts? Make sure to let the parents now and act on it, offer physicological help in school when possible, maybe pay teachers more so they can actually do their work without thinking on their next job after that. And so on.

The problem is now we already have way too many people fighting on the opposite side of the social benefit, and doing anything good will be met with a lot of challenges. Doing the right thing was always way harder than doing the wrong, that's a big part of why a lot of people crack and choose the easy stupid route.

But as I write far too much once again, in resume I still think what we have built, achieved and have access now, thanks to the internet on all this years, is still a big positive in the balance, the balance is clearly shifting to the other side now, but it takes time to outweight all the historical and current benefits.

No doubt, having all this information at your fingertips, easily cross referenced is amazing.

It's a double edged sword though. While I understand the world, history and especially geopolitics much better thanks to the internet, I'm also far more aware how little I can do about it all. Sometimes I do think ignorance is bliss :/

The internet has also made people more scared of each other. It's much safer nowadays compared to the 80s, yet due to the vast and instant availability of bad news, the perception is the opposite. Imo also a driving factor in the global shift towards fascism or rather authoritarian populism. Fear drives people into the hands of a strongman, populist leaders.

Would all the fearmongering about immigrants and Islam be as productive without the internet?


"the problem is how this information is being used and manipulated"

The issue here is confirmation bias and self censorship. All information is still available on the internet, there is some censorship yet for now there's simply too much for anyone to control. That is until everything goes through an AI censor :( But why bother, people censor themselves already by sticking to what's familiar, ignore what challenges their belief. Instead of your neighbor telling you wth are you on about, you get a like on the internet for your nonsense.


I guess the question is as hard to answer as whether splitting the atom has been a net positive or negative for humanity. 

But how to teach kids how to use the internet responsibly.

One thing AI can do is fact check every post on the internet. Instead of a like button, a truth 'score' and consensus percentage. Click on it to get the lay down how it got there, what the general consensus is, the facts and what counter examples there are.

Of course those making AI seem to have the opposite in mind :(

I think the internet not only reveals how terrible people are, it also makes them worse, because it seems to amplify all the negatives. Before the internet, if you had a hunch about what's wrong, I'm guessing it was a hunch. Now there's support for every vague hunch in the form of millions of people, pushed to you efficiently by algorithms, so now your hunch becomes your reality, regardless of whether's it's correct or not. Naturally I too am making this argument based on a hunch, reinforced by seemingly sensible arguments from others.

The question is, does anonymity take the mask off, or do people get swept up in mob psychology?

Maybe a bit of both. Online gaming has shown how the mask comes off with people spewing things that they would never say on the street.

And there are plenty examples of mob psychology, eg the 2019 "Storm Area 51" Facebook event. For real... However instead of millions only a few thousand showed up so most people are not that stupid.


Ideas can spread far more easily thanks to the internet. When you had a friend 'in the old days' with some radical ideas you would set him straight. Now that friend can easily find like minded people online or get attention with a radical idea.

Of course whether that's good or bad depends on what those ideas are. Once refusing to sit at the back of the bus was a radical idea...



It's all so conflicting. The internet supports both positive and negative things for humanity. While I do feel it's on the negative side now, it's really just because how people choose to use the internet. Yet that can be fixed. 

The biggest problem right now are the algorithms feeding you a dopamine drip with tidbits of sensational 'news' that matches everything else you've paid attention to before. The profiling of users needs to be outlawed. Make people choose for themselves again instead of scrolling an all you can see never ending buffet. The addiction to social media is destroying society.

I'm not sold on outlawing profiling of users, but it's definitely possible you're right about that. Other than that, I think I agree with everything you say, although I'd like to add that it seems that many people are pretty bad online even when they're using their real names and other identifying information. I don't think it used to be that way, and I'm not sure how much of that can be attributed to growing confidence due to getting reinforcement and how much it's about the normalization of not hiding your personal information from strangers anymore.